The frequency and magnitude of malicious attacks against wireless networks have been steadily increasing.
A large variety of solutions have been proposed to counter malicious attacks against communication networks. While these schemes may mitigate the threat of attacks against wireline networks they are inadequate for wireless networks.
For example, in a wireline Denial of Service (DoS) attack it takes a long period of time, relatively speaking, for a server to be disabled because such machines have a larger processing capacity than a wireless endpoint (mobile) which has limited processing and battery lifetime. In addition, a wireless link is severely bandwidth-constrained when compared to a wireline network. Thus, if traffic from an attack reaches a mobile, the attack has already succeeded in wasting critical resources of the wireless link, the wireless infrastructure, and the battery power of the mobile. This is in contrast to typical wireline DoS attacks that must overwhelm processing resources at a server in order to succeed.
There are numerous types of attacks that are attempted against wireless networks, two of which are signaling type attacks and battery (i.e., sleep deprivation) attacks. Co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 11/094,416 and 11/236,735, incorporated herein in full as if set forth in full herein discuss such attacks and propose specific techniques for defending against such attacks.
However, attacks against a 3G wireless network are not limited to just signaling and battery attacks.
It is desirable, therefore, to provide methods and devices for defending many types of 3G wireless networks against numerous types of attacks.